Opinion - The Korea Times

260,000 members

By Jason LimThat's supposedly the number of men who paid “Baksa” meaning a Ph.D., up to $1,200 in cryptocurrency to receive a link that would take them to chat rooms hosted on Telegram or Wickr. According to the Hankyoreh daily, which broke this story last November, the members were given access to videos that consisted of humiliating sex acts, self-torture, self-mutilation, rape, incest, forced eating of human excrement, and other acts that were deemed too brutal to describe.The videos featured young women, many of them underaged, who were blackmailed by Baksa (and Got-got, etc. who were the orchestrators of similar schemes) into videotaping themselves as they did Baksa's outrageously abusive bidding. Some were physically kidnapped and raped by select, trusted members and videotaped. According to reports, it worked like a flashmob for rape, trapping a helpless girl somewhere public and giving a quick shoutout to volunteers who would rush to the location to take turns to rape her.Two things really differentiate this crime.One, the barbaric nature of the forced acts that t

Mar 29, 2020By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Stories on toilet paper

By Jason LimThe world is running out of toilet paper because everyone's buying it up to somehow ward off the coronavirus. Seriously, the disconnect between toilet paper and anything that might be helpful to protect one's family during a coronavirus crisis is difficult to bridge. I understand people stocking up on water ― what if they have to leave on a road trip into the countryside to escape the marauding zombies? We've all definitely seen a movie or two. I also understand hoarding baby wipes and other throwaway cleaning products ― definitely want to keep everything clean and sanitized these days. And I totally get boxes of ramen and even SPAM ― those things will last forever and still taste good. But toilet paper?The Canberra Times in Australia quotes four experts who weighed in with different flavors of explanations.First, Alex Russell, from the School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, Central Queensland University, says: “I think we're noticing the toilet paper more than the other things because toilet paper packs are big items that take up a lot of shelf space. Seei

Mar 13, 2020By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

'Othering' as human imperative

By Jason LimJames Lane Allen once said famously, “Adversity doesn't build character; it reveals it.” If this is true, then the coronavirus scare will be downright pornographic about the character of South Korea as a nation and people. As we hit over 3,000 confirmed infections in Korea, what's been unclothed so far hasn't been pretty. This is unsurprising and fully expected, yet it's still cringeworthy to note how consistently mean and base our instincts tend to be when faced with threats and fear, especially in our need to create the “other” to point fingers at and lay blame.In the face of misfortune, we need to blame people. Scapegoating in the face of something bad happening is a time-honored tradition and, seemingly, a human imperative that we see time and time again. In the beginning, it was all about the Chinese. It was their fault for eating weird foods, not being hygienic, living close to wild animals, etc. You name it. All the prejudices against the Chinese that had been muted due to the meteoric rise of the traditional hegemon and Korea's growing econ

Mar 1, 2020By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Sneezing while Asian

By Jason LimSneezing in public is risky business these days when you're an Asian. With the coronavirus so closely linked with Wuhan, China, all Asians have become automatic suspects overnight as carriers of the virus. The suspicion grows worse with the finding that you don't have to show symptoms to infect others. It was a bit jarring to realize that a bunch of people getting infected by a new virus in the middle of China (where I've never been) could instantaneously reach out and influence my immediate environment in such a personal way by making me hyper-sensitive to what I look like when I am sneezing or coughing.An L.A. Times article titled, “Fear of coronavirus fuels racist sentiment targeting Asians,” quotes Rosen Huynh, a 22-year old living in California: “I don't know if it's just people looking at me coughing or because I'm an Asian person coughing, they think I might have the coronavirus,” said Huynh, who lives in Monterey Park. “I feel like every time I cough, people are going to be uncomfortable with that. I shouldn't have to feel that way.&r

Feb 16, 2020By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Arbeit macht frei

By Jason Lim“Work sets you free.” These words probably formed the most ironic phrase ever witnessed in the 20th century as they greeted millions of Jews who were marched under the wrought iron gates of Auschwitz. Jan. 27 marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops, a place where Nazis systemically killed 1.1 million Jews. The evil of the Holocaust is still smeared across the collective psyche of the world. One cannot deny that the Holocaust imparted a horrific lesson that the post-WWII world used to baseline the morality norms that we enjoy today and still seek to uphold (albeit haphazardly) against all attempts to debase it. However, I fear that the depth of the trauma becomes shallower as years go by for a world that might prefer to forget, running the risk that we might one day have to learn the lesson all over again.The enormity of the crime that was the Holocaust often masks the “banality of evil” that perpetrated and facilitated the continent-wide mobilization to kill. In her seminal work, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A R

Feb 2, 2020By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

'I can no longer hear God'

By Jason LimIn one of the pivotal scenes in the Netflix movie, “The Two Popes,” Pope Benedict XVI cries out, “I can no longer hear God!” to his would-be-successor. “I believe in God! I pray ... but only silence. How can I reveal his word to our millions of pilgrims if I do not hear his presence?”He then goes on to utter what I believe are the most insightful lines of the whole movie: “I have been alone my whole life, but I have never been lonely, until now. You wished for an extraordinary reason for my resignation ― do you have one now?”Benedict might have meant that the extraordinary reason for his resignation was that he, as the Vicar of Christ, could no longer personally hear God. But what I took away was that he was lonely. By the nature of the position and his own personality, he was disconnected from real human relationships, isolated without any community, and surrounded by utter silence, even from his own internal guiding voice he had relied on. In today's lingo, he was being “ghosted” by his world.This, more than an

Jan 22, 2020By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

'Luke, I am your father'

By Jason LimUntil recently, I could have sworn that the above line from “Return of the Jedi” was uttered by Darth Vader as Luke, a newly minted Jedi, boarded the Death Star to take down the evil Emperor Palpatine. It's a belief shared by many Star Wars fans, including my eight-year-old son. Apparently, we were all wrong. The actual line was, “No, I am your father.” And it didn't happen at the final encounter. It happened way before when Luke initially had his hand chopped off by Darth Vader.Such a phenomenon is coined the “Mandela Effect.” As a recent article by Quartz explains, “In 2009, Fiona Broome, an author of several “how-to books about ghost hunting,” found herself in a conversation at Dragon Con, a yearly pop culture convention, with a group of people who shared specific memories of Nelson Mandela's death in the 1980s, including scenes from the televised funeral and a speech by his widow. But when Broome was having that conversation, Mandela was alive. It wasn't until 2013 that the South African leader passed away. And it

Jan 3, 2020By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Technology and gender gap

By Jason LimIt's no secret that trends happen faster and more visibly in Korea than in most other countries around the world. A popular actress' dress or hairstyle will be all the rage ― and I mean practically everybody ― for a season or two, only to be replaced by the next big thing. Perhaps the sheer population density of the country, in which the rich and poor, old and young, and every other demographic live practically on top of each other and can't help but see and be seen, drives this speedy uptake.This is not limited to fashion. Korea also prides itself in being the latest and greatest when it comes to technology, especially the fast and ubiquitous connectivity that underpins the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Of course, there are also the robotics, AI, blockchain, and other latest technology trends. In fact, the 2018 speculative craze that surrounded bitcoin and other cyber currencies in Korea was fairly shocking in both its breadth and speed.Besides being a tool for making money, however, what other impacts will technology have in Korea? Here's something that you don't usuall

Dec 22, 2019By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

'OK, Boomer' moment in Korea

By Jason LimThe Boomers were the authors of the last great story of Korea, the one that tells of the down-trodden but plucky, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps people who achieved wealth and democratization through individual courage and collective struggle. They were the “Just Do It” generation, sacrificing everything so they could “live well for once,” as Park Chung-hee exhorted. They made something out of nothing through sheer will and effort.This story held from 1960s to the end of 1990s when the IMF crisis hit and exposed the huge plot holes by laying bare the structural deficiencies in Korea's success model. As the old story fails, the narrative glue that used to bind Korea together has also loosened, leading to the deteriorating social and cultural cohesion that the older generations took for granted. The ruling conservatives, who are the keepers of the old story, are reacting to this dissonance by trying to retell the familiar and comforting story in a more forceful fashion ― this nostalgia drove the election of Park Geun-hye back in 2012, only to see

Dec 8, 2019By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

'3 didn't make it home tonight'

By Jason LimThis was the title (my translation) of a powerful storytelling piece by the Kyunghyang Daily, splashed across its front pages, about the fact that an average of three people are killed daily by industrial accidents in Korea. Rather than just reporting the statistics, the Kyunghyang feature tells stories about the individual victims, making them come alive in a three-dimensional way that invites emotional relevance and empathy.Kim Ho-min was a 22-year-old who was 19 meters up in the air affixing a metal structure to the concrete wall, balancing himself on a 13-centimeter deep palette that so narrow that his heels stuck out. He was braced against the wall for leverage. He did have a safety belt but there was no hook to hang his belt on. He lost his footing as he strained to turn the screw and fell onto the floor below. He was killed.Park Jae-woo was a 59-year-old who was moving construction materials near four huge air ventilator tunnels 22 meters up in the air. As he leaned into one to grab and move the material, he fell into the hole to his death. He wasn't wearing a safe

Nov 24, 2019By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

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260,000 members

Stories on toilet paper

'Othering' as human imperative

Sneezing while Asian

Arbeit macht frei

'I can no longer hear God'

'Luke, I am your father'

Technology and gender gap

'OK, Boomer' moment in Korea

'3 didn't make it home tonight'

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